It'll be a little while before he realizes manager and brewmaster Frank DelGreco is unaffiliated, ineligible for the Aug. 10 Republican gubernatorial primary.

But to the 61-year-old Simsbury resident, a former Dartmouth baseball star who pitched in the St. Louis Cardinals' farm system and went on to head BankBoston Connecticut, it's a chance to gauge the local business climate at the popular restaurant and brewery.

The information gathered may help Griebel's underdog run for the Republican gubernatorial nomination.

Yes, Griebel finds out, the recession has hit the SBC, which has five locations, including Stamford, Milford, Hamden and Branford.

In 2008, DelGreco brewed 80 batches of various beers in the copper kettles separated from the dining room by floor-to-ceiling windows. Last year, it fell to 60. This year, he said, he hopes to brew 70 batches. It helps that the SBC has a contract with the Bridgeport Bluefish baseball team, whose fans gulp down about 100 kegs a season.

"You're doing what it takes to get people into the door," Griebel says. "Anything to get people in the door."

"It's a recession-proof job," DelGreco responds with a grin. "When times are good, people drink. When times are bad, people ... drink."

"What most people need is customers," Griebel tells DelGreco sympathetically. "We need more people with more disposable income."

And that's the crux of Griebel's campaign, which began last winter when he took a leave of absence as head of the MetroHartford Alliance, the regional chamber of commerce in north-central Connecticut, to pursue an outsider campaign for the GOP nomination.

Griebel says he knows what businesses need to help the state's nearly 9 percent unemployment rates: Government has to leave them alone and stop regulating and taxing them to death.

While Griebel's energy and commitment to running have him driving around the state every day to tell groups large and small about his mantra of smaller government and a more business-friendly Connecticut, he's still mired in single digits in the polls.

The recent Quinnipiac University Poll found him with only 7 percent support among Republican voters in the run-up to next Tuesday's statewide gubernatorial primary, lagging behind Lt. Gov. Michael Fedele, of Stamford, and front-runner Tom Foley, of Greenwich.

Griebel is unfazed, staring into a 217-gallon brew kettle with DelGreco, as Ashley Maagero, his spokeswoman, snaps a few pictures to post on Twitter.

Over the din of the beer flowing from the brew kettle into the heat exchanger, Griebel asks DelGreco about what he needs to make business easier.

That's when Griebel learns a new word, "growler," which, thanks to legislation passed in recent years by the General Assembly, allows brew pubs to sell half-gallon glass bottles of beer for take-out and off-premises consumption.

If Griebel gets elected, he says, he'll push for a constitutional amendment that would keep lawmakers away from the Capitol every other year, forcing them to enact two-year budgets with no flexibility for rewriting them. That way, he says, it could become a part-time Legislature once again.

Griebel, former chairman of the state's Transportation Strategy Board, says he would push for reinstating tolls on state highways, with the income expressly dedicated to needed transit improvements.

Griebel says he would also change the state's pension program from a defined benefit plan to defined contribution plans, a tactic which, if he wins the primary next week, will make him a target for the 50,000 unionized state workers.

Nicknamed for Ozzie Nelson, the patriarch of an early TV sitcom, Griebel says he intends to force his personality -- and team-building ethos -- on the Legislature and state government.

He is an opponent of the state's voluntary public financing program for state legislative and statewide races that will provide Fedele with more than $2 million.

Unlike Foley, who shortly after entering the campaign wrote checks to his race for more than $2 million, Griebel has raised about $450,000, including a $30,000 loan.

State Senate Minority Leader John McKinney, R-Fairfield, who has endorsed Griebel for governor, said Monday that he has known the candidate for a number of years, including during his stint leading the Transportation Strategy Board.

"I have found him to be a dynamic leader," McKinney said. "I think he has vision. He has the ability to lead and bring people together I haven't seen from the other candidates."

McKinney said Griebel suffers from an obvious disadvantage in campaign funding: opting out of the public financing and not wealthy enough to write multimillion-dollar checks.

"He has less in his campaign coffers, but in a primary, you don't know what will happen," McKinney said.

He noted that with Fedele and Foley from Stamford and Greenwich, respectively, Griebel might be able to emerge victorious.

"He's the only candidate from Hartford County, so he might have an advantage if the two candidates from Fairfield County beat each other up," McKinney said. "What I have found is that a lot of Republicans, after hearing Oz, are impressed by what he says."

McKinney said Griebel's warnings about the state's multibillion-dollar unfunded pension liabilities are being echoed by no other candidates at this point.

"We have the largest per-capita debt in the country, and the fund could go bankrupt before 2019," McKinney said. "To me, tackling the toughest issues in the state is a real sign of leadership. He is running not to be a political leader, but the leader of the state."

Chris Healy, GOP state chairman, agreed that Griebel has helped shape the issues in the primary race.

"I think Oz has brought an incredible amount of energy and has brought the focus on some important issues to this campaign," Healy said in a Monday interview. "A lot of it is nuts-and-bolts material that isn't sexy, but he understands the mechanics of what needs to be done in government."

In the brewing chamber at the SBC, DelGreco has just told Griebel that he's unaffiliated and not a registered Republican. "Well, look, would you at least consider going to your local registrar of voters and changing to Republican?" Griebel asks. "You have until Aug. 9."